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09/10 they also had a clown name gerald wallace on the team, did you take that into consideration?
Thus far, Stephen Jackson and Boris Diaw look to be rather large upgrades on the defensive end for the Spurs. While neither one has a reputation of being a great defender, here's something to consider: The 2009-10 Charlotte Bobcats, coached by Larry Brown, were the top defensive team in the NBA. Stephen Jackson and Boris Diaw averaged 39.3 minutes and 35.4 minutes on that Bobcats team, respectively.
You have to be doing something right on D to average that many minutes on the league's best defensive team. And when it comes to playing for a demanding defensive coach, Larry Brown is the ultimate. Perhaps we Spurs fans, who haven't seen an elite defense in town in a longer time than we'd like to admit, shouldn't be surprised if these two ex-Bobcats end up teaching the current players a thing or two about defense.
09/10 they also had a clown name gerald wallace on the team, did you take that into consideration?
What are the late season moves Spurs have made in recent seasons?
Great point. At first glance, you wouldn't think a player like Diaw could excel under the tutelage of Brown, but he did. The same could be said for Jack, with his abrasive personalty, but both were vital pieces for that team in Charlotte and both look to be vital players for the Spurs.
They are both very "handsy". They dig and pull balls loose. You add that to the reaches of Leonard, Green, Manu and Blair, they created a lot of havoc against Philly. It even rubbed off on Matt Bonner.
It's hard to believe that the Bobcats were such a good defensive team just a couple years ago. Ever since Diaw and Jackson were acquired there seems to be more energy with the team defense from pretty much everybody.
Such a huge change from a er that sleepwalked through games and still played 30+ mpg... Even if Jack was a mess today, I loved every minute he was out there. His ups were mostly by trying to make stuff happen, instead of just passing the ball around and yawning...
Diaw is active. Compared to Blair he has size, which you can't teach. We'll see when we play some physical team how does he responds.
leonard > wallace
duncans corpse/tiago > injured chanlder/tyrus thomas
parker/ginobili > raja bell/dj agustin
this team has no excuses now to not be a top 7 defensive team
they have two 7 footers who can patrol the paint and a lot of tweener wing players who can guard multiple positions
Tyson Chandler and Gerald Wallace were pretty important in that defense, though defense is really about how players defend together, a team isn't going to be elite defensively if 2 of the positions are below average. You're not playing that many minutes on a LB coached team if you're a bad defender.
Gotta say I'm loving the defensive intensity these last few games. Although playing New Orleans with half their team injured and the Sixers without Iguodala isn't exactly an achievement. Neither team is a good offensive team, so I'm going to wait to judge the defense later when we play more offensive minded teams that can put up points.
However, doing this with our own absences (the big 3 each missing a game, Splitter, Bonner, Neal also missing games), while also doing it on a back-to-back-to-back is quite impressive.
It's funny we're talking about Pop like he's no longer an elite defensive coach. It used to be that Pop wouldn't play guys that didn't play good defense. I wish his inner Don Nelson and inner Larry Brown could find some good medium.
And we have Kahwi.
Someone should twit that to J McDonald, that would make for a great question to ask Pop.
The best thing about it is that it doesn't look like a fluke, these two are really doing work on D. On the other hand the O did regress, you can't look at it only one way, but it could get better with more PT (Jackson TOs, Boris finding his place other than the great high screens).
Last edited by Paranoid Pop; 03-26-2012 at 02:20 AM.
Just like you took Andre Iguodala into consideration tonight when you called the Sixers defense trash right?
Defense is so hard to quantify for individual players. The bottom line on D is: does the other team shoot a high percentage and score a lot of points. For that Bobcats team, the answer was - No.
There are 240 available minutes, per team, in each game. Jackson and Diaw represented 75 of those minutes, or about 31% of Charlotte's total minutes. If the team is the best defensive team in the league, and those two guys are putting in almost a third of all available minutes, it stands to reason that they are doing a pretty damned good job on the defensive end.
There are lots of people who didn't (and still don't) appreciate just how good Bowen was on defense. They are the ones who say that he should not have had his number retired. So if Jackson and Diaw aren't "known for being great defenders", what does that really say about them? Chances are, not much - since great defensive plays are rarely on the highlight reels.
But Jackson and Diaw don't have to be lock-down defenders to make a really big difference. All they have to do is take up a bunch of the minutes formerly going to the weak-link players. When you have 3 guys on the floor at one time playing good help defense, the other two weak links are going to make the whole team look terrible.
Edit: BTW - that's three games in a row the Spurs opponents have scored less than 90 points. It could be a fluke, but if they pile up a few more we can be pretty sure it's not. The Hornets game was ugly. But one of the hallmarks of those defensive Spurs teams was winning ugly.
Btw this kind of post is what makes this forum awesome.
Not a fluke but not completely convincing either. Holding Dallas and Philly below 90 is no easy feat and I was impressed with both wins. However, Dallas looks like a below .500 below when Dirk plays poorly but credit our defense for that. Against Philly, they were missing their all-star and one of their top scorers (but we were missing our 2 best interior defenders.)
Against the Hornets, well I'm surprised that team scored over 60 points. That roster reminded me of an old Bucks team (2006/7?) that I used to always place bets on to score under their total point spread.
All in all, a lot of reason to be optimistic about our defense and I would fully expect this team to continue to showcase some great defense. So I definitely don't think its a fluke but a lot remains to be seen.
Nice find. Really something interesting and explains why the Spurs have been improving defensively
i consider everyone trash man if ur name aint tim duncan..
You called Tim Duncan a scrub early in the season. Care to explain that?
Haha seriously, tdmvpdpoy was one of the biggest Duncan haters and Splitter riders early on.
What is noteworthy too is that Larry Brown absolutely loved Diaw. For a coach like Brown, who is similar to Pop in a lot of aspects, Diaw's positive aspects overshadowed his negative ones by a lot. It gives confidence that Diaw will do well under Pop.
Getting rid of that albatross Jefferson had to be done one way or the other. Credit the F.O. for finally getting it done and correcting their original "mistake". A huge weight was lifted off its shoulders. Now the team is riding an emotional high right now but eventually it will come back down to earth. Pop needs to figure out a steady rotation so the existing guys can build chemistry with the new guys. He can't keep relying on individual talent alone to win games. If he continues to the helter skelter approach I'm afraid as playoff time approaches the spurs are going look up in their rear view and see a number of teams gaining fast.
As someone who hasn't watched him play much, I must confess that his passing is stupendous.
In the Hornets game, I saw one sequence where he plays the pick and roll with Parker.. After setting the screen, Diaw moved quickly to the elbow and received the pass from Parker from the perimeter. Within a split second of receiving the pass, he flipped it (in the same motion as receiving the pass) to Sjax (or was it Leonard) for a wide open made 3. He seems to have really great vision for a big man who plays the pick and roll game very well.
His defense in the final play in the Hornets game was also very good.
Diaw's acquisition must be the most unassuming one in the league this season and based on the limited sample size, a major one. Hopefully once Splitter is back, we will get to see more interesting combinations.
Here's a quote from SJax about Diaw
http://blog.mysanantonio.com/spursna...urs-yet-again/
Jackson played with Diaw in Charlotte, and he says Diaw’s passing is on another level. “His basketball IQ,” he said, “is through the roof.”
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